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Home > The Getting Simple Podcast > #6: Running Away from Centralized and Addictive Technologies with Peter Boyer
Podcast: The Getting Simple Podcast
Episode:

#6: Running Away from Centralized and Addictive Technologies with Peter Boyer
Category: Health
Duration: 01:50:58
Publish Date: 2018-05-01 04:00:00
Description:

Running Away from Centralized and Addictive Technologies with Peter Boyer

Hello, and welcome to The Getting Simple Podcast. In this episode, Peter Boyer ([@ptrbyr](http://twitter.com/ptrbyr)) talks about his efforts to run away from notifications and centralized technologies toward decentralized, encrypted-by-default alternatives; and also about self-driving cars, being in relation with nature, addictive technologies, uses of machine learning for design, and a lot more. > You can listen to this episode on [iTunes](http://gettingsimple.com/itunes), [Castbox](http://gettingsimple.com/castbox) or [Stitcher](http://gettingsimple.com/stitcher). Peter defines himself as a software engineer with experience in distributed systems, programming languages, and computer aided design on the web. Self-declared "incapable of getting bored," he believes in learning by doing and by asking naive questions, and enjoys how, in computer programming, experimentation is *free* — unlike in other disciplines such as architecture or scientific research. While working at Autodesk, he built custom tools for artist Janet Echelman to build city-scale, net sculptures; was a core developer on the open-source Dynamo product; and was nominated, company-wide, for Innovator of the Year in 2016, due to his work on distributed systems with technologies like Go, gRPC, AWS, or Docker. Previously, he built custom applied numerical optimization tools in C++ at Gehry Technologies for the fabrication and design of buildings. While studying a Master of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Peter cross-enrolled in multiple software engineering and math courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), like Geometric Computation or Design and Analysis of Algorithms, and proposed—in his master's thesis—a system to trace the inhabitation of a building throughout its history, as a way to positively affect the lives of its occupants. You can follow Peter on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ptrbyr) and [Github](https://github.com/pboyer). ## Episode Notes - [The Lean Startup](http://a.co/4M2q4d1) book. - [GeoCities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_GeoCities), founded in 1994, was one of the first free web hosting services. When it shut down (in 2009) there were 38 million user-built pages. - [Gilbert Strang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Strang) is an American mathematician with contributions to finite element theory, the calculus of variations, wavelet analysis, and linear algebra. Peter describes him as "a linear algebra guru from MIT." - [Modern Operative Systems](http://a.co/5py4WeS) book by Andrew Tanenbaum. - [Modern Compiler Implementation](https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/modern/) books by Andrew Appel, Princeton. - [Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools](http://a.co/0qK05NN) book (also known as the [Dragon Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniques,_and_Tools)). - [Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(Asimov_novel)) is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov. - [Aldo van Eyck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_van_Eyck) was an architect from the Netherlands. He was one of the most influential protagonists of the architectural movement Structuralism. - [Next Door](https://nextdoor.com/) is "the private social network for your neighborhood." - [Verb](https://github.com/pboyer/verb) nurbs is an open-source, cross-platform [nurbs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_rational_B-spline) library initiated by Peter in 2013. - [Andrew Witt](http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/person/andrew-witt/) is an Assistant Professor in Practice in Architecture at Harvard GSD, teaching and researching in the relationship of geometry to perception, construction, automation and culture. - [TypeScript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TypeScript) is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript, and adds optional static typing to the language. - The [Loop-Blinn](https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch25.html) technique is a technique to render vector art on the GPU. - [TrueType](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType) is an outline font standard developed by Apple and Microsoft in the late 1980s. - [Machine learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning) is a field of computer science that uses statistical techniques to give computer systems the ability to "learn" with data, without being explicitly programmed. - [Christopher Alexander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander) is a widely influential architect and design theorist. - [Janet Echelman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Echelman) is an American sculptor and fiber artist. - [Conway's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law) is an adage named after computer programmer Melvin Conway, who introduced the idea in 1967: "organizations which design systems […] are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." - [ProtonMail](http://protonmail.com) is an encrypted email provider protected by strict Swiss privacy laws. - [Mastodon](https://mastodon.social) is a decentralized, open source social network. - [The Everglades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades) is a natural region of tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida. - [Upspin](https://upspin.io) is "a framework for naming everyone's everything." - [InterPlanetary File System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System) is a protocol and network designed to create a content-addressable, peer-to-peer method of storing and sharing hypermedia in a distributed file system. - Craiglist's [free stuff](https://boston.craigslist.org/search/zip) section features products that people want to give away for free. - [Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other](http://a.co/8KISGN1) by Sherry Turkle. *** Thanks for listening! *** If you enjoy the show, the best way to support it is by [rating it on iTunes](http://gettingsimple.com/itunes), or by [becoming a Patreon](http://gettingsimple.com/patreon) to support it financially.
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